Hi Eng Wai,
Great to have you back.
As you have noticed, the Forum is really active again, with lots of wonderful information going back and forth.
Enjoy!
Sim.
How Are You People
Hi, Sim,
(Was planning to mention this to you several times, but in my usual enthusiasm to throw out new topics each time I visit the forum, I forgot!)
I have cited Nicholas C. Bodman's "Spoken Amoy Hokkien" in this forum on a couple of occasions, so I thought I'd recommend it to you (being a non-Chinese-educated sould like me!
).
Apart from the afore-mentioned advantage it has for readers like us, the book has quite an extensive vocabulary coverage, as well as grammatical and sentence structures. There are quite a number of 'technical terms' that you will most likely recall from conversations with your parents/grandparents, which have fallen into disuse among today's generation.
I am aware that the pronunciations provided may differ somewhat from the Penang varieties that you and I are familiar with. However, these differences are relatively few, and easily transposed to Penang Hokkien where appropriate.
Of course, it suffers in terms of not having any Chinese characters. However, I figured that your interest lies more in the spoken language itself (by the way, it has a fairly good - if a bit haphazard - list of categories, something I know you like!) than the 'benzi' - something that has become a pet obsession of mine in this forum!
I was reminded about it only because I recently did a search for Hokkien books on Amazon.com, and was pleasantly surprised to note that it has received its first customer review... and got 5 stars!
(Was planning to mention this to you several times, but in my usual enthusiasm to throw out new topics each time I visit the forum, I forgot!)
I have cited Nicholas C. Bodman's "Spoken Amoy Hokkien" in this forum on a couple of occasions, so I thought I'd recommend it to you (being a non-Chinese-educated sould like me!
). Apart from the afore-mentioned advantage it has for readers like us, the book has quite an extensive vocabulary coverage, as well as grammatical and sentence structures. There are quite a number of 'technical terms' that you will most likely recall from conversations with your parents/grandparents, which have fallen into disuse among today's generation.
I am aware that the pronunciations provided may differ somewhat from the Penang varieties that you and I are familiar with. However, these differences are relatively few, and easily transposed to Penang Hokkien where appropriate.
Of course, it suffers in terms of not having any Chinese characters. However, I figured that your interest lies more in the spoken language itself (by the way, it has a fairly good - if a bit haphazard - list of categories, something I know you like!) than the 'benzi' - something that has become a pet obsession of mine in this forum!
I was reminded about it only because I recently did a search for Hokkien books on Amazon.com, and was pleasantly surprised to note that it has received its first customer review... and got 5 stars!
-
Sim
Hi Mark,
Thanks for this tip.
I'd heard of the book before but don't recall having it strongly recommendned (not criticised either). I think perhaps Aurelio (who was one of our major contributors but who is at the moment very busy with Mandarin-related activities) may have told me about it.
I'm planning on looking for Bodmer when I go to London later this year. There is a largish bookshop there, specializing only in books about foreign languages (foreign, that is, from an English-speakers perspective!).
I have been very busy with learning Mandarin at the moment, so I've neglected my order of Hokkien books (the 2 dictionaries I mentioned some time ago) from the Maryknoll Center in Taiwan. I have to chase up the order, as there are some problems with it.
Will get on to it soon, and give feedback on this Forum.
BTW, I *am* interested in spoken language, and I'm fascinated by new forms, and borrowed words, and informal forms etc, (i.e. I am not a purist (as you know), but that in no way makes me not interested in all the aspects *you're* interested in. Some time back I promised a long, thought-out response to one of your postings (posted on the "Written Taiwanese" topic), but I still haven't got around to it. I suppose I can try to explain some of my viewpoint here in the meantime:
I am totally in support of your dictionary endevour. Believe me, I love etymology too. I can't even begin to explain to people how excited I was about 5 years ago when I learnt that the Latin "carpe" of "carpe diem" (seize, grab the day = enjoy life while it's there (as you undoubtedly know - that was more for the benefit of other readers not familiar with Latin)) had the same ancestor as "harvest" in English (or "Herbst" in German, which nowadays means (the season) "Spring").
That the Romance c- corresponds to the Germanic h- I had known for a long time ("century"/"hundred", "canis"/"hound" etc), and that Romance -v- corresponds to Germanic -b- was possibly also in the dark recesses of my mind), but this concrete example had me trilled for weeks: carpe -> harve- !
Anyway, that's just to let you know that I love reading all about your discoveries and postings about how some Hokkien words correspond to some ancient Chinese morphemes which may have died out in modern Mandarin, etc. I also love all the discussion on which is the correct hanzi to use to write this or that Hokkien word. (Where we differ, as you know, is that I don't necessarily reject the "popular" solution, which may not be the etymological one, but that is purely from a "practical" point of view. If I could have my way in how the world ran, I too would give first preference to the "etymologically correct" hanzi!)
So, that was all just a long-winded way to say that in no way should you feel apologetic about:
>> ... 'benzi' - something that has become a pet
>> obsession of mine in this forum! ...
Quite on the contrary, keep it up!
Mark: do you have an email address I can write to you at? There are sometimes "preliminary" questions which are not quite appropriate for this Forum, and it would be nice if I could sound them out with you first.
Also, I'd like to hear much more about your Dictionary Project. Please write to me at tomazz123 at the <provider> standard email format, or post your address here (in a suitably disguised way so that spammers don't get to it). Hint: for <provider>, substitute yahoo (dot-com of course).
Regards,
Sim.
Thanks for this tip.
I'd heard of the book before but don't recall having it strongly recommendned (not criticised either). I think perhaps Aurelio (who was one of our major contributors but who is at the moment very busy with Mandarin-related activities) may have told me about it.
I'm planning on looking for Bodmer when I go to London later this year. There is a largish bookshop there, specializing only in books about foreign languages (foreign, that is, from an English-speakers perspective!).
I have been very busy with learning Mandarin at the moment, so I've neglected my order of Hokkien books (the 2 dictionaries I mentioned some time ago) from the Maryknoll Center in Taiwan. I have to chase up the order, as there are some problems with it.
Will get on to it soon, and give feedback on this Forum.
BTW, I *am* interested in spoken language, and I'm fascinated by new forms, and borrowed words, and informal forms etc, (i.e. I am not a purist (as you know), but that in no way makes me not interested in all the aspects *you're* interested in. Some time back I promised a long, thought-out response to one of your postings (posted on the "Written Taiwanese" topic), but I still haven't got around to it. I suppose I can try to explain some of my viewpoint here in the meantime:
I am totally in support of your dictionary endevour. Believe me, I love etymology too. I can't even begin to explain to people how excited I was about 5 years ago when I learnt that the Latin "carpe" of "carpe diem" (seize, grab the day = enjoy life while it's there (as you undoubtedly know - that was more for the benefit of other readers not familiar with Latin)) had the same ancestor as "harvest" in English (or "Herbst" in German, which nowadays means (the season) "Spring").
That the Romance c- corresponds to the Germanic h- I had known for a long time ("century"/"hundred", "canis"/"hound" etc), and that Romance -v- corresponds to Germanic -b- was possibly also in the dark recesses of my mind), but this concrete example had me trilled for weeks: carpe -> harve- !
Anyway, that's just to let you know that I love reading all about your discoveries and postings about how some Hokkien words correspond to some ancient Chinese morphemes which may have died out in modern Mandarin, etc. I also love all the discussion on which is the correct hanzi to use to write this or that Hokkien word. (Where we differ, as you know, is that I don't necessarily reject the "popular" solution, which may not be the etymological one, but that is purely from a "practical" point of view. If I could have my way in how the world ran, I too would give first preference to the "etymologically correct" hanzi!)
So, that was all just a long-winded way to say that in no way should you feel apologetic about:
>> ... 'benzi' - something that has become a pet
>> obsession of mine in this forum! ...
Quite on the contrary, keep it up!
Mark: do you have an email address I can write to you at? There are sometimes "preliminary" questions which are not quite appropriate for this Forum, and it would be nice if I could sound them out with you first.
Also, I'd like to hear much more about your Dictionary Project. Please write to me at tomazz123 at the <provider> standard email format, or post your address here (in a suitably disguised way so that spammers don't get to it). Hint: for <provider>, substitute yahoo (dot-com of course).
Regards,
Sim.